Michelle Obama to industry: Promote broccoli

First lady Michelle Obama on Wednesday urged America’s food and media companies to use the “magic” of marketing to sell healthy food instead of junk food.

The call to action — which took place at the first gathering at the White House on the topic of food marketing to children — signaled that the Obama administration intends to continue relying on the private sector to reduce the barrage of junk food marketing to kids.

Last year, a four-agency attempt to create voluntary standards on food marketing to kids tanked after the food industry and Republicans on the Hill loudly criticized the effort. Health advocates were disappointed that the White House publicly stayed out of the controversial debate, especially considering its relevance to Obama’s platform on childhood obesity, and most have since given up on any government action on the issue, including voluntary guidelines.

“It’s so great to have the White House enter in this conversation,” says Margo Wootan, director of nutrition policy at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which has long advocated for limits on marketing sugary, high-sodium foods to kids.

At Wednesday’s nearly three-hour event, Obama praised certain companies for their progress on shifting kids’ marketing toward healthier products, but said the entire food and beverage industry, along with media companies, needs to “do even more and move even faster to market responsibly to our kids.”

“The average child watches thousands of food advertisements each year, and 86 percent of these ads are for products loaded with sugar, fat, salt,” Obama noted. “By contrast, our kids see an average of just one ad a week for healthy products like water to fruits and vegetables.

“And as you all know, these ads work,” she said. Kids who see food products advertised are more likely to lobby their parents to buy them — it’s what the industry calls “pester power.”

The first lady, on the other hand, pledged to use soft power to make gains on the food marketing front. She told food company executives in the room that she was eager to “celebrate and highlight” their efforts.

“That’s what I’ve been doing since I first started working on this issue, whether it was visiting a Walmart stocked with fresh produce, or having dinner at an Olive Garden with a healthier kids’ menu, or hanging out with Mickey to celebrate Disney’s achievements on this issue,” Obama said. “And I am eager to have these kinds of celebrations with every company in this room.”

The first lady praised Birds Eye vegetables for using characters from the kids’ show iCarly and the Vidalia Onion Association for using Shrek to significantly boost sales.

The White House allowed media to only attend remarks by the first lady and Sam Kass, the executive director of Let’s Move and a senior policy adviser. A press aide said the rest of the three-hour meeting was closed to press so that the participants could “have a candid conversation.”

After reporters were ushered out, the remaining audience of about 100, which included representatives from General Mills, Wal-Mart, MomsRising and NAACP, heard presentations from the Federal Trade Commission, Disney, the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative (a self-regulation initiative lead by the Better Business Bureau) and the Berkeley Media Studies Group (a critic of marketing unhealthy food to kids).

All the attendees then broke into two groups to discuss how to shift marketing to kids. The White House asked stakeholders to discuss tactics for marketing healthier choices, how healthy foods can be made more attractive to kids and how to make continued progress on reducing marketing of unhealthy foods.

Participants told POLITICO they found the meeting productive and civil, but didn’t expect anything groundbreaking to come of it. The big shift, they said, was that the White House was leading the conversation.

The convening follows the first lady’s launch of of Drink Up, a campaign to encourage water consumption, which some see as a veiled attempt to discourage the consumption of sugary beverages without going negative. Big beverage companies sell bottled water, too, so the message is something industry can get behind.